The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for administering surveys and more particularly to methods and apparatus for administering surveys via a television transmission network.
Surveys are an effective tool for gathering data on a variety of facts and opinions. Surveys can aid businesses and organizations in defining and/or achieving their goals and policies. Manufacturers, in particular, find surveys useful in ascertaining the appeal of their products and product packaging to the average customer. For example, Proctor and Gamble, when designing a color scheme for a box of laundry detergent, finds consumer opinions very useful in choosing one that is most appealing. Even more beneficial to Proctor and Gamble is the knowledge of preference for the box color scheme in different countries and regions so that they can adapt the color of the box appropriately.
A typical survey constitutes a set of questions that are distributed to a group of people having appropriate characteristics or within a desired demographic group. The group returns responses to the questions, and the responses are assembled to determine, for example, average responses and majority responses. The conventional ways for administering surveys include, for example, (i) calling people in the demographic group of interest and asking them to answer questions, (ii) soliciting the information from consumers shopping in supermarkets or malls, (iii) posting the surveys on the Internet for interested parties to participate in, and (iv) mailing out surveys to potential or present consumers of various products and services. These methods of administering surveys contain inherent drawbacks, for example, consumers often feel harassed and inconvenienced by survey solicitors and neglect to answer survey questions thoughtfully. These methods also require time-consuming processes of compiling raw data into informative vehicles of information.
Television is potentially a very effective way of conducting surveys. Television, viewers constitute a large and diverse portion of the population, and thus they serve as a good representation of the pool of product consumers. Surveys conducted via cable television systems, however, have not had wide success. One method of administering surveys over cable television is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,876,592 to Von Kohorn in which consumers watching home-shopping stations and the like can agree to answer questions and in return receive payment, usually in the form of certificates or coupons. Such surveys, however, are particularly susceptible to a variety of attacks that compromise the integrity of the collected data. Since surveys conducted via cable television systems allow respondents to participate remotely, they are unsupervised and can submit random responses rather than meaningful responses. Even worse, an appropriately designed computer program can submit random or otherwise meaningless responses while appearing to be one or more respondents. There is always the possibility that a significant part of data collected from such a survey will be inaccurate or otherwise untrustworthy. Since the data collected by such surveys is not accurate or trustworthy, product manufacturers have not widely accepted cable television-administered surveys as a reliable method for product testing. Cable television providers, in turn, do not make these surveys available.
Technological limitations have also restrained businesses from conducting surveys via cable television. There have been many technological advances in the area of cable television transmission systems, but they have not yet been utilized in administering surveys via cable television. These potentially useful transmission methods include radio frequency transmission as used by Gemstar International to streamline interactive television systems, fiber optic cable, and coaxial cable. In addition, digital television is rapidly being recognized as the practical future of television because of its highly-compressible data that can be stored in small space and thus transmitted quickly. To applicant""s knowledge none of these technologies has been effectively applied in conducting surveys via cable television.
Thus, a need exists for a system that administers surveys via cable television that fully utilizes possible cable transmission technologies and that also includes fraud protection features. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for conducting surveys that reduced or eliminated the above-described shortcomings.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for conducting surveys via a television transmission network that reduces or eliminates the shortcomings of known systems.
In accordance with the present invention, a controller such as a cable television provider computer receives a survey including survey questions from a client desiring to have a survey conducted. The controller creates respondent questions based on the survey questions. The controller also selects one or more respondents to participate in the survey. The respondent questions are transmitted to the selected respondents via a television transmission network. Responses corresponding to the respondent questions are received.
The controller applies an inconsistency test to the responses to generate an inconsistency test result. The inconsistency test determines if the responses originate from computers or humans not paying attention to the questions. Based on the inconsistency test result, a fraud signal may be generated. The fraud signal may result in several actions, such as the controller ignoring the responses received from the corresponding respondent, reducing or eliminating payment to the respondent, transmitting a message of reprimand to the respondent, and/or barring the respondent from future participation in surveys.